I (27F) am being asked to use my personal computer and download a tracker for work : legaladvice

Authored by reddit.com and submitted by bookluvr83

As the post says I am a 27 year old family nurse practitioner in Virginia. I work in private practice, think family doctor, and my company from the beginning has required me to use my own personal computer. When I was hired I wasn't told about that, but instead on the first day, they told me to bring it and use it daily as it needs to go in with me to see the patients. I think this is crazy for a variety of reasons- lots of wear/ tear that I'm not compensated with, bring back/ forth- risk of losing it or it being stolen, patient's records on my personal computer, sick people getting germs on my computer and on and on. I have been at this position for 5 months and so far the mouse pad has stopped working because my hands are always wet with hand sanitizer. So then I had to buy a wireless mouse. I have a nice computer and I hate that it's being "destroyed" like this.

Today I have strep. Strep as an adult is terrible. I told my boss I could either stay home or stay home and work at home clearing lab results, ect. That night on the phone she said yes please work from home. First thing this morning they wanted me to install a timer to my personal computer that allows the practice to see how much time is being spent in each chart, for billing purposes they say. It is a google chrome timer extension. I told them that I would be more than happy to use that on a work computer (we have a few desktops) but I was not comfortable downloading a timer on my home computer. She said OK, but was clearly mad, then 5 minutes later had her assistant call me and tell me to stop working for the day since I wouldn't install the timer and that I was now only allowed to use a desktop at work.

This is on top of the fact that I have to clock in/ clock out on an app on my phone that tracks my gps. Yes, I have a master's degree and have to clock in/out even for lunch. During the entire time it is on, gps is tracked.

So listen, I know I need a new job but- is this legal? How do I approach this? I am now going to have to use sick/vacation time that I wasn't planning on using. I think I should be paid for my time today.

fbueckert on October 11st, 2018 at 20:32 UTC »

This entire story screams of dumpster fires.

Anal time tracking? Check. Missing necessary equipment to perform job? Check. Lowjack personal equipment to keep tabs on your employees? Check. Generic Gmail accounts to send patient information? Double-check.

This whole thing is one screaming match away from six digit fines.

NDaveT on October 11st, 2018 at 19:47 UTC »

I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if every IT professional who reads /r/legaladvice cried out...

FellKnight on October 11st, 2018 at 19:35 UTC »

I was going to go with:

This has gone past "your company is doing something that is probably a bit bad" to "you should really be looking at whistleblowing this to the state of VA and HHS, who are going to nuke the site from orbit."